It requires an effortless, simple, and high-bandwidth approach.
If you know me, you know my feelings about collaboration. In short, I see it as a mandatory component at the heart of every high performing team. It fuels teamwork. A strong collaboration foundation will elevate shared understanding and collective ownership.
The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.
Your method used is critical. Face-to-face at a whiteboard is where you hit a collaboration sweet spot. Here communication is rich and has its highest bandwidth.
If you and your teammates don’t collaborate, are you a team? Well, my friend, the odds are stacked against you. Without collaboration, most would describe your team as a collection of individuals.
Given its importance, how can we embrace collaboration in a remote work environment? Remote teaming throws a wrench into the collaboration engine.
The other day, one of my colleagues said, “Doesn’t Agile and what you do depend on being face-to-face?” This got me thinking. I have no doubt in the value of face-to-face collaboration at a whiteboard. It is elegant, effective, and effortless. But that does not mean the situation is hopeless if we are not face-to-face at a whiteboard.
While not as effective as face-to-face, collaboration can happen in a remote situation. But there are some pitfalls to avoid.
Along with you, I have seen first-hand over the past two months what works and what does not in a remote world. I have seen the struggle with remote collaboration. Let’s first dive into a few remote collaboration myths. Then we will define the characteristics of what works from my experience.
Myth 1: Remote Heads-Down Time Increases Team Productivity
I hear this all the time. People rave about how nice it is to work remotely. This is often attributed to the value of heads-down time. Being away from the office protects team members from distractions. There is no question this increases individual productivity. But it often has a detrimental effect on teamwork and the force multiplier of a team.
Some individual heads-down time is healthy for any team. But an effective team integrates individual learning and work back into the collective team mind throughout the day. Individual work is like branching software development work off of the mainline codebase. The longer the branch lives and evolves, the harder it is to integrate it back into the mainline.
Integrating individual work back into your team’s shared mind requires effort and time. Too much individual work makes this arduous and wastes time. But too little individual work might also slow you down. We all need individual time to process and think. Striking a balance is key.
Though individual work is tempting when remote, focus more on shared team collaboration. An effective team moves together.
Myth 2: Written Communication Replaces Face-to-face Conversation
I read an article the other day that puzzled me. It claimed improving your writing competency eases the team communication burden when remote.
The article provided several tips. It emphasized the importance of using deductive writing style. Outlined were tips on using short sentences with simple words and bullets. And the article conveyed the importance of repeating written communication in several forms.
The article concluded that better writing can streamline meetings. It claims better meeting notes removes the need for all team members to attend every meeting. So when written well, notes create shared understanding for those not in attendance.
This article, while well-intentioned, is attempting to achieve the impossible.
The written word will never beat face-to-face conversation at a whiteboard. In his book, Agile Software Development1, Alistair Cockburn models different modes of communication and their effectiveness.
Face-to-face interaction at a whiteboard is the most effective form of communication. It has the highest bandwidth due to non-verbal communication cues. Being at a whiteboard also allows sketching and illustration to further enhance communication.
But a document is the least effective communication mode, and this includes meeting minutes. A document can be a great reminder for those who are part of a collaborative discussion. But it is ineffective for anyone who is not there.
There is no conversation in a document. A document communicates decisions. The context of the collaborative journey to reach the decision is not replicated. And on top of these deficiencies, non-verbal cues are absent.
Even instant messaging is not ideal. While messaging allows for back and forth written conversation, non-verbal communication is absent. And no matter how fun, emojis don’t make up the difference.
Myth 3: We Can Achieve the Same Throughput or More in a Remote Environment
Many of us fall prey to believing a remote environment will have no impact on our team’s productivity. We even think we can be more productive due to Myth 1.
Often our optimistic beliefs in remote throughput are a symptom of wishful thinking.
Sometimes, we take advantage of the fact remote teams have more time available to work. After all, there is no commute. We relax morning rituals—showers, shaving, and business attire become optional. And none of us “leave” work. We are available at all times.
Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.
Having more time available for work can burn us out. Being on video or conference calls all day is exhausting to the mind and the body. Never unplugging creates an unsustainable pace. With a pandemic pulsing in the background, the pressure mounts further. And this all works to slow us down.
Collaborating to gain shared understanding as a team also takes extra effort and time. As outlined in Myth #2, attaining shared understanding takes more energy when we are remote. Alignment is slower when we are not face-to-face at a whiteboard.
The cards are not stacked in our favor for productive work when our team is working remotely. Maintaining a sustainable pace takes on a new meaning. Making space for remote collaboration takes extra effort and slows us down. Given these factors, we need to accept that our throughput as a team will be slower when compared to co-location.
A Model for Viable Remote Collaboration
Collaboration is a critical component of a team. It does not matter if the team is face-to-face or remote. Without collaboration, teamwork declines. Attaining shared understanding becomes strained or does not happen.
Everyone has a narrative in their head about what they believe. Collaboration is the means of getting each team member’s internal story visible to the team. This is how we assess gaps in understanding and work towards a shared understanding.
I have found viable remote collaboration has three key attributes. It is effortless, simple, and high-bandwidth.
1–Effortless
One of the best ways to simulate co-located collaboration in a remote environment is to set aside specific times every day for team collaboration. This blocks calendars, eases coordination of schedules, and creates a heartbeat around collaboration. It acts as a virtual watercooler that everyone on the team visits at the same time.
Because no one likes to sit on a call all day, keep these collaboration sessions short and focused. One hour or less is ideal. Multiple, short sessions per day are better than one, long session. Your session length and cadence will vary based on the activity. Mobbing, Pairing, or Swarming sessions might have different configurations than required for general collaboration.
Using the collaboration time as a happy hour session is another great option. Let’s not forget the importance of having fun and building relationships. This happens without trying in the office, but we need to make time for it when remote. We need more breaks from work these days to diffuse the stress.
Keeping the format and topics discussed informal helps ease the preparation burden. Let the collaborative discussion flow based on topics attendees bring. Lean Coffee is a great option for easing the facilitation of these sessions.
2–Simple
Don’t worry too much about tools. Keep things simple. We are trying to promote interaction in the team. Tools can get in the way.
Adjusting your working agreements can be a lightweight technique to promote collaboration. Let me provide an example from a team I’m coaching.
My team was struggling to encourage conversation on conference calls. The team’s silence was decreasing shared understanding. Their internal voice was not heard.
The team came up with a simple solution. For important topics, they created an agreement to hear a response from everyone. They now perform a round-robin discussion for important items. Each team member provides their perspective and understanding.
Before this simple technique, open questions were being asked to the group, such as, “What do you think?” or, “Do you agree?” More often than not, there would be silence or one or two team members would speak up.
After deploying this method, the team shared understanding increased fast. The new method verbalized the narrative in the head of each team member. And this allowed the team to evolve collaboration to converge on a shared direction.
This simple solution required no tools other than a video conference call. And the only process addition was facilitating the round-robin and time-boxing the discussion.
3–High-bandwidth
The written word is not enough to reach a shared understanding. No matter how eloquent and rapid the written form, your communication bandwidth will reduce.
In a remote environment, collaborating face-to-face at a whiteboard is not possible. But you can get close with widely available, simple tools.
Make use of video communication tools like Zoom, Webex, or Microsoft Teams. Turn on your cameras. Nobody will care that you did not comb your hair. There is no substitute for seeing facial expressions and reactions. Even with video, eye contact still suffers. You can’t replicate the human connection of eye contact on a video chat. But it is the closest thing you have to face-to-face in a remote scenario.
You can even record your video call for later reference or to allow those not in attendance to watch. This beats written meeting notes for revealing the entire arc of the conversation.
Use virtual whiteboards in these tools to sketch out and visualize your ideas. If you happen to have a modern tablet with a pencil, you can approximate the real thing. A lightweight, digital co-creation tool, such as Mural, can take it further. Mural allows you to simulate the collaborative sticky-note experience.
I will warn you, it takes time to get used to these digital tools and they are still far removed from the real thing. But they do help grease the wheels for remote collaboration.
The bottom line: collaboration is king whether you are remote or not. You have to prioritize it even if it slows you down. In the end, it will speed up the achievement of shared understanding. And this will add up to effective team delivery.
Don’t compromise collaboration when you are a remote team. Avoid being seduced by the individual productivity of heads-down time. Avoid the lure and ease of relying on written communication. And accept the fact that your productivity will reduce when you are remote.
When you are remote, focus instead on viable collaboration that is effortless, simple, and high-bandwidth. This will enable you to regain your team groove when you are remote. Collaboration increases engagement. And engagement breeds happiness. Now, let’s get back to collaborating!
Also published in Serious Scrum on Medium.
For further reading on collaboration, check out the following posts:
- Agile Leader Pattern 4 for Building Awesome Teams: Enable Face-to-Face Interaction
- If Your Scrum Is Not Fun, You Are Doing It Wrong
- The Secret to Product Owner Success
- The Simple Solution is Your Friend in Complex Times
References
- Agile Software Development, Alistair Cockburn, 2001 ↩
Todd Lankford unlocks Lean Leverage in organizations to cultivate powerful, engaged product teams who maximize outcomes and impact.
His articles share his experiences and learnings along the way. Join the mailing list to get them in your inbox.